Well, I did my second batch of cheese, and with this batch I invited friends and family to bring their cheese over. The types in there are: Cheddar (all mild), Sharp White Cheddar, Swiss, Colby Jack, and Pepper Jack.

I did a batch about 2 weeks ago and it came out smelling like an ash tray. I read through the forums and found that I need to let it sit. Today it is much better, but still a bit stronger than I'd like, so it'll get another week to mellow (I have a feeling it'll be gone on super bowl sunday).

So for this smoke I invested in the mailbox mod with an AMPS for my smoker hoping that it would eliminate that ashtray smell...it didn't. Am I just thinking too much into the stale smoke smell and need to let the cheese mellow, or is there something I can be doing differently? The only thing I could think of is that it's sort of cold outside (30 degrees f), and that I wasn't getting a good smoke draft going, but it looked like TBS, and was steadily moving out of the smoke chamber; I also opened the cook chamber a few times to add the cheese from the stragglers.

I've read around the forums, and there are posts that say, "you need to wait for it to mellow" and others that say, "You should be able to eat it right away". Maybe my smoke times are too long? For the first smoke, the cheddar was on there for 4.5 hours, this time I reduced the time to 3 hours, and some of the stragglers cheeses were only on for 1.5 hours, but they all still have that stale smoke smell.

Anyway, advice is greatly appreciated, and more than likely will be put to use for the next set of cheese (or this one if the solution is, "wait"). Also, here is the mandatory q' view.

Here is my setup from last weekend up in Michigan. Nothing crazy Amezen filled with apple pellets 5x8 on top of my burner (which is off) 4.5 hours of smoke & it is good right out of the smoker but definitely mellows a bit after sitting in fridge for a few weeks.